Working Title 03.21.11: The Tournament Scene – High Skill Only or No Fun Allowed (Part 1 of 2)
Posted by Jordan Williams on 03.21.2011
With the Fighting Game Scene taking off in a big way thanks to more organization it seems like more players than ever are getting into the super competitive side of the game...but is that exactly a good thing? Or is it just the natural evolution of the genre?
Welcome to the #1 Column to not be surprised AT ALL that the 3DS is selling out like cocaine laced hotcakes in Japan, WORKING TITLE. People always want to doubt Nintendo when it comes to its usual gaming practices and honestly I cannot blame them when it co9mes to the stuff they do with consoles…the Wii was a top heavy idea that sort of petered out after the first year. But if there is one thing in gaming that needs to be engraved on the walls of time and hung on the front step of every hardware manufacturer out there it's the simple rule that…
YOU DO NOT FUCK WITH NINTENDO HANDHELDS
Sega learned it, Sony kind of learned it, and Microsoft knew to stay the fuck out of it. They name power, the brand power, and the fact that they can literally release the same damn console three times in a row and still somehow make everyone under the sun buy one just proves that when Nintendo puts something on a handheld they have some magical power that somehow keeps it from failing.
But in other news the slow news weeks of Spring continue sort of in the gaming world, which leaves someone like me without much too really talks about. So for this great TWO PART column I am going to examine what seems to be a little bit of an issue in the fighting game community whenever a new fighting game is released.
Do tournaments do more harm than good? For those of you in the fighting game scene you know that this time of year is when a lot of big tournaments start to show up. We've already had Final Round and Winter Brawl and Power Up 2011 is in a month. With the cementing of an official SEASON of fighting game tournaments it looks like the fighting game scene in America is going to get on par with the Starcraft Scene over in Korea.
But some people think that's not necessarily a good thing.
Some people think that tournament style play not only saps the fun out of experimenting with players you like, but also opens the game up to tons of cheap tactics, tricks, and general play that turns the game less into a hobby and fun but more into a chore where to win you only need to know how to do the cheapest and most technical things and forfeit the ‘fun' aspect of games. This is not a new argument at all; this has been around for a LONG time but really got re-ignited with the last generation of games which saw deeper fighting mechanics and games that were NOT fighting games being bent to the rules of such (Super Smash Brothers). But is that really the case? Is the competitive scene for fighting games doing more harm to it than good or is this just a high level of play that needs to be recognized as such and if you don't want to be a part of it then you should really stop complaining?
So it's another one of those columns where I get to talk to myself! Whoo! As I mentioned earlier this is going to be a two parter (to make up for the lack of column last week) and the second part should be up on the normally scheduled day of Thursday. Also if you are looking for Working Gaming Update that'll be on the Thursday Edition as well.
So let's get this started…how about we start with the negative side of things for once?
Working Title: The Tournament Scene – High Skill Only or No Fun Allowed (Part 1 of 2)
As soon as video games were invented with the very first gaming being a game where you directly competed against someone else you knew that eventually the video game competition would become something bigger than the industry itself. And while America has taken a bit longer than others to hop on the bandwagon of Professional Gaming it is not secret that around the world there is an undying will to turn our favoriting time killing hobby into…well…a sport.
It started with just wanting to get your name at the top of the leader board in the arcade, but when home consoles came around you no longer had to stake claim on something with just a simple three letter acronym, you could start hosting tournaments at home or at venues for people miles around to see. And then internet came around and everything went goddamn apeshit.
Words and information spread faster than the punches could fly and all of the sudden you had players making names for themselves before even stepping foot into an arcade, you would have people being well known simply from the online play. Word of mouth of the strategies and new moves spread around on places like YouTube and SRK.com. All of the sudden the small little underground scene that people knew during the 90s when Street Fighter II took the world by storm is now a worldwide thing.
But…that might be a bad thing. Advance strategies, training videos, tier lists. They all contribute to the fighting game scene in their own little way but at what cost does the tournament style of play have to come at? What happens when you just want to play the game for fun and you can't anymore due to the lack of people who want to just sit back and relax? What happens when the fan base and the community takes only sticks to the few good characters and the lack of experimentation turns the game into something that is so inaccessible to newer players that the genre doesn't grow or change at all?
Play to win or not at all
Tier lists, character combos, special teams and special moves. These things are pretty normal when it comes to fighting games but when thrown into the tournament setting they almost become a bible in which you must strictly follow in order to be competitive at the game at all. Any company can go completely out of its way to make a great roster of fighting game characters with unique moves and personalities but give that same roster to a fan of the fighting game scene and all of the sudden what you have lest is a tier list which whittles down the actual amount of players in the game to a tiny number. These are the characters you will see for the rest of your time in the scene.
So where does the experimentation come in? Where does the fun of playing with the character or team you WANT to play with instead of the one that will give you the win you are looking for? You can argue that when you take anything and make it competitive that certain things like "Playing for fun" have no place and all that matters is that you come out on top but why does winning have to come at the expense of enjoyment?
You need an example? Take something like Super Street Fighter IV. Let's say ever since day one your character has been Vega. You fucking love Vega. He is your ROCK. But let's say that he turns out to be a low ranked character by tournament standards. In order to play competitively you need to pick up someone like say…Fei Long. Do you make the choice if sticking by Vega no matter what at the expense of constantly getting your shit kicked in by ‘better' characters or do you conform to the scene and pick the character you know will give you the easier chance at winning?
Now some people might opt to stick with the character they want to play as because to them that's what they find fun, but that is when the scene was a small underground place where you could only play the same people and you had a chance to learn. Now that The Scene has hit the internet and has grown like a giant tiger shooting, optic blasting, NEUTRALIZING force there is just no escaping it. You play the game online? Be prepared for the cheapest of cheap players using the cheapest of cheap victories for the cheapest of cheap wins.
And then they'll call you a scrub.
A Scrub. Iplaywinner.com defines a ‘Scrub' as… Term for someone who is terrible at fighting games with no intentions of getting any better due to the fact that they are convinced they are already a legit player.
So wait a second. A scrub is someone who sucks at the game. I can get behind that…but the second part of that throws me off. No intentions of getting better because they are convinced they are already a legit player? What does "Legit" mean? This is why some people think the Scene is a bad thing…it makes it seem like you are completely ostracized from the fighting game community if you have no intentions of going pro and obeying the mighty rules set forth by the tournaments. Where does the fun come from there?
So now the landscape of the game has changed. Due to the Tournament Scene the amount of people who just want to play are dwindling in favor for those who just want to win. I know the fighting games at its very core are about beating the other person into oblivion but when does it become a chore instead of a game? I am not saying the fighting Scene is bad. I am not even saying that competitive gaming is bad. I am saying that it seems now more than ever that the scene is getting such a high barrier for entry that no newcomers need to apply. Only those who want to play to win, those who wants to go to Evo and take on Daigo and Jwong, those who want to have YouTube tributes made for them are the ONLY ones who want in.
And is that really what we need?
Or…is this a good thing that should be celebrated?
Find out on Thursday.
Working Question
Keeping with the theme of fighting games. Warner Bros. just came out and said that they will be throwing a 21,000 dollar tournament for new Mortal Kombat game to prove they are really damned serious about this being a fighting game this time.
So with all of these grassroots tournaments springing up over the years like Evo, Final Round, Winter Brawl (etc.) forming together and creating their own Leagues and what not. Do you think that the Fighting Game Scene will take off here with big money matches and tournaments similar to the Korean Starcraft Scene?
I say yes. Almost every weekend there is some sort of tournament going on for fighting games and they are getting better and more organized. They have sponsors like MadCatz and Capcom giving them special treatment and even last year Evo was getting a lot of exposure through G4 and Xplay (with Adam Sessler's commentary and all). So I think sooner than later we might see live televised coverage of fighting game tournaments.
If anything they are a bit more interesting to watch than Starcraft II matches.
Until next time Thursday, I'm Jordan Williams...and given the way the internet has been acting, I might have to do a Dragon Age 2 is AWESOME sooner than later.
